You're a fresh new Level 70 World of Warcraft character. By now you have toughed out the rough jungle of Stranglethorn Vale, sufficed through the wicked Plaguelands, and tore through the Burning Legion in Outland. Through this time, you've learned your class's role. Whether you are a Tank, Healer, or DPS/Crowd Control(CC) your character's class somewhere plays a viable and essential aspect to raiding.
The normal instance encounters or dungeons have all been 5-man. Raiding steps it up a notch and brings you to 10-man and 25-man encounters. These raid group encounters push you and your character's skill to the test. They require coordination and planning.
The first step you want to take in getting into raiding is to do the research on what guilds on your Realm are raiding guilds. You can start by asking around the Realm, or logging onto the World of Warcraft forums via the World of Warcraft website. You will usually find guilds with posts as to what classes they are currently looking for or recruiting. You can also posts that contain the list of guilds and a progression chart as to how far the guild has progressed into the difficulty of the content.
Now that you have found a couple of guilds you are interested in you are going to want to contact a guild member of one of the guilds you are applying to. Most of the time they will refer you to a guild officer, guild master, or the guild website in which you will apply to. At this point is where you need to show them what you have to offer to their guild and why they should invite you into it.
Almost 100 percent of the time, they are going to want to look at your gear. You can prepare yourself for this, by running Heroic versions of the 5-man Dungeons with your current guild, a number of your friends, or by pick-up-groups (PUGs). Through these Heroic versions, the gear dropped is of better quality than the gear dropped in the normal version, thus preparing you better entry-level raid dungeons. Another step in gearing up your character, is with some of the crafted sets that you can make through you're professions (Tailoring/Leatherworking/Blacksmithing). These sets give you an awesome head start.
It would be a safe bet to say, that all of the raiding guilds use interface add-ons. The most popular add on, and by far the most essential, is an add-on called Omen. There are other numerous add-ons like KTM, which are practically identical to Omen. Omen measures threat on a target, which is useful for making sure that your DPS or Healers do not take aggro from the Main Tank. Another add-on widely used is Group Calendar, which guilds use to organize and set up the raids. The add-ons guilds use varies from guild to guild, but these add-ons are useful ones to have in preparation to raiding.
The advice seen here, through numerous experiences, is a good head start in what to expect when entering the PvE Raiding Scene. I hope that what you have read here is somewhat useful and it may aid you in your adventures throughout the World of Warcraft.
